The hotels are empty, the posters have all come down and the stadium has been returned to its usual users, Daegu FC. The British team are already back home. Most of them were on the first flight out on Sunday evening. You wonder who took the seat next to the head coach, Charles van Commenee, on the way back. Not, you would guess, any of the long jumpers or relay runners. Van Commenee had a mixed reaction to the nine days of competition. His team met their target of seven medals, but they did not produce the 15 or 16 likely contenders he wanted for London 2012.

Still, this was Britain's best championships since 1993, when they won 10 medals and three golds. As recently as 10 years ago, in Edmonton in 2001, they won only two medals, one gold and one bronze. But expectations are higher now, partly due to the demands Van Commenee makes of his athletes, but mainly because of the looming London Olympics. "We have hit our target every time in the last three years," said Van Commenee. "Indoors and outdoors. It sets us up for a good position for the Games and that's what it's all about. Seven including two gold medals makes me very happy. Obviously there is also, as in any championship, areas where it didn't go well – we have this crop of athletes that has to be pushing to be closer to medals. Too many have failed in that group."

The four possible gold medal winners Van Commenee picked out before the championships find themselves in contrasting positions. Mo Farah and Dai Greene have both made their names, and possibly their fortunes, in the last week and will have to get used to the idea of being described as favourites for their events. Of the two, Farah is the more likely to repeat his success. He may even surpass it by doing the 10,000m and 5,000m double, as he did at the European Championships in 2010. Farah's finishing kick is so strong that if he gets his strategy right before the final lap, he is all but unbeatable. The 'but' comes in because in London he may have to race a fully fit Kenenisa Bekele, who has won three Olympic and five world championship titles in Farah's events.

Greene still has to contend with at least five men who are quicker than him over the 400m hurdles. But he has shown, in his coach Malcolm Arnold's words, that he is a competitor. "A lot of athletes stay flat when they compete at this level," said Arnold. "Some of them go down, and the really good ones go up two notches. Dai is good at that." He will need to be, because his event remains wide open.

If Farah and Greene found any time between their races to watch the rest of the championships this week they will have seen how Olympic and world success do not necessarily follow each other. Of the 47 athletes and relay teams who are currently Olympic champions, only eight won their events in Daegu.

As for Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu, they now find themselves facing younger, better competitors. In the next 11 months both may need to reach a level beyond anything they have achieved before. In the heptathlon, Tatyana Chernova's winning score of 6,880 was 49 points beyond Denise Lewis's British record, never mind Ennis's PB, which is another eight points further back. As for Idowu, he has to out-jump two men, Christian Taylor and Teddy Tamgho, who are both a lot closer to breaking Jonathan Edwards's 16-year-old world record of 18.29m than he is.

"I love second places when you're a year out," said Van Commenee, however. "It's not easy to train with a mindset of the No2 when you are a world champion, but in these two cases these guys are so hungry."

Van Commenee said his first aim is to "secure the medals" the team have won. He may find that difficult in the cases of two of them, Andy Turner in the 110m hurdles and Hannah England in the 1,500m. Brilliantly as both ran, it took the disqualification of Dayron Robles to bump Turner up to bronze, and in England's race the cards all fell in her favour, not least when two of her competitors, Morgan Uceny and Hellen Obiri, took a tumble coming around the last bend.

So the very least Britain need to do is find one more medal if they are to get the eight they want in 2012. "I have plenty of talent in the crop, which is the main thing," said Van Commenee. "It has to be developed and polished. I also don't think that in many cases drastic changes are necessary. We're really on course."

He agreed that some of his youngest athletes had not performed well, but felt that was because they had had a long season after the European Under-23 Championships. "When I look at, for instance, Holly Bleasdale who failed here, she's a great competitor because she won her U23 champs which was her main target for this year. We have a great group there in Jack Green and Nathan Woodward and they have done really well. I have strong belief in our group, we have enough depth to do it next year."

And if the British public needs any more consolation than that, they only need to look across the English Channel. France won four medals in Daegu, three bronze and one silver. As for South Korea, they had two top-eight finishes – a sixth in the 20km and a seventh in 50km men's race walks. So far as setting the bar goes for host nations, it does not get much lower than that.